"Dwarf Trees at the Paris Exhibition" from Garden and Forest




       The dwarf trees which the Japanese horticulturists are showing at the Paris Exhibition are attracting much attention.  Pines, Thujas and Cedars, said to be 100 or 150 years old, are only eighteen inches high, and with such specimens it would be easy to have a coniferous forest on a balcony.  These arboreal deformities are produced by great labor, and, if the truth is told about their ages, this work of arresting the tree's development and forcing it into contorted forms must be persisted in by several generations of foresters.  All this painstaking is hardly paid for by the beauty of the resulting abortions[sic], but, as has been suggested, a look at these trees will explain where the fantastic forms come from which serve as models for the plants we see on the lacquered trays, bronzes and embroideries which come from Japan. 1

NOTES

1    In the "Notes" section, Garden and Forest, Vol. 2, Issue 78, August 21, 1889, pg. 408.

A version of this was reproduced in The Pittsburgh Dispatch (Pittsburgh, PA), Sept. 18, 1889; Barton County Democrat (Great Bend, KS), Oct. 24, 1889; The Iola Register (Iola, KS), Oct. 25, 1889; The Daily Yellowstone Journal (Miles City, MT), Nov. 7, 1889; The Manning Times (Manning, South Carolina), Nov. 20, 1889 and The Democratic Press (Ravena, OH) on that same date; and The Peninsula Enterprise (Accomac, VA) on March 15, 1890, among probably other papers.


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